Another Beautiful Summer Garden

Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point

It's hard to get excited about putting in the work and expense of cultivating my own garden when I can drive 5 minutes away and enjoy scenes like this!!!

P.S.  I have had several people ask if I add saturation to this image.  Here is a comment I made on facebook where I have lots more viewers than here on my blog:

Several people have asked if I 'photoshopped' my last post to make the colors so......well, colorful??? This is probably the most common question landscape and nature photographers get asked regularly! Read on to find out my answer..... Many die hard traditionalists feel that anything done to a photograph outside of the camera is cheating, (even though we know that early photographers also regularly manipulated their images, even the great Ansel Adams). But what if the manipulation comes in the camera before the shot is taken, such as using special filters or lenses or camera settings to create unique 'looks' that are not what the eye would normally see?? In the days before digital, even the film a photographer used would change the look of an image. Portrait and wedding photogs would often use Provia film which produced neutral, soft colors that would enhance skin tones, whereas landscape photographers would use Velvia film which produced vivid, saturated, bright colors. My current digital camera love, a mirrorless Fuji xt-1 has settings that simulate the 'look and feel' of those most popular films. So when I shoot colorful scenes, like the one here, I often set my camera to the Velvia setting to bring out the colors. So for you traditionalists out there, is this in-camera selection of a specific setting to achieve a specific look, cheating? Of course photography has always been about combining art and science into personal interpretation, (I'm not talking about journalistic photography in its strictest form). But today, because of modern technology, the lines between photography, graphic art, paintings, drawings, and other art forms continue to blend and overlap, and the traditionalists who try to keep those boundaries separate and apart are in a losing battle. For them, it sometimes becomes more important to base their opinion of the value of an image on how it was created, rather than whether the image itself is beautiful, meaningful, uplifting, informative, evocative, etc. I wonder how many people who love the work of Monet thought to ask what type of brushes he used, or the brand of paint he preferred!! (For those who missed my photo in question, here it is again.) P.S. I do have to say, when I compare my photos on my computer with how they appear here on FB, they often look more saturated. Not sure if this is a FB thing!